Thursday 14th March 2019

Progress report for readers of The Orison miniseries.

Thank you for your patience. Despite appearances, I am still working on this project. I am just (temporarily) overwhelmed with how much non-writing work an Indie writer has to do for him/herself which a ‘traditional print publisher’ would do on their behalf. Beyond writing, an Indie author must also advertise, market, promote, network, publicise, build, administer, maintain, and more … A writer cannot do any one of those *and* write at the same time; time has to be prioritised, which was never my strong point!

So what have I been doing recently, instead of actual writing ? Getting this website up and running, and producing its first newsletter. Phew!

But, whether what I am doing is viewed as ‘writing’ or not, I am still working on The Metaverse series in general and The Orison miniseries in particular.

News hot off the press

Today, I made the difficult and heartbreaking decision to kill one of my darlings. Following so soon after its conception, the murder will only require a single cut; it will be quick and painless (though not for me).

I am talking, of course, about removing an episode from my outline of The Orison; one I was looking forward to writing very much. As a minor spoiler, the climax of this miniseries will occur in a tenement block called Paradise Gardens. The soon-to-be-killed episode describes an earlier moment when our protagonist Gouta gets permission from the Freeport City Council to build this apartment block. Does that sound boring? Not if you knew Freeport, where politics can get you killed. If you thought life was tough for Gouta on the streets, the corrupt, wild and dangerous jungle that is the Council will make that early experience feel like a polite tea party.

(Note: Please do not think this is my critique of contemporary local politics; it is all pure fantasy... of course!)

I feel this subplot has enough potential to make a ‘good read’ as a separate story but, had I left it in The Orison, it would have felt like a very long digression to the reader. So it will live on, like a half-alive zombie, on the growing list of stories ‘to be written one day’. Do contact me if you want to read it sooner/later/never (using the ‘I have a question’ button on the web site, or via this Enquiries link).

According to the outline, which I have been tweaking for some time, the main plot seems to be settling down to 8 or 9 episodes. I hope to finish this phase… ‘soon’ (this month?), so I can start writing the next two episodes; these should appear on the website relatively quickly. Although I fixed their order some while ago, I found I need to map out how (& in which episodes) to drip-feed details of Freeport City and its exotic world, while avoiding excessive exposition (i.e. boring ‘info-dumps’). So I created a large (& still expanding!) spreadsheet, with rows for each episode, and columns for the various threads that must weave through the story; threads like:

  • Gouta’s developIng character as she grows up,

  • her developing talents, hinted-at in Episode 1 (did you spot them?),

  • events in Freeport City,

  • various other characters and when they appear,

  • and so on….

If you have not yet read Episode 1, it is on this page of my website… www.DWBrownlaw.net/stories

Opinions needed

  • Got any guesses where the story of The Orison goes next?

  • Think you have a theory about Gouta’s talents?

  • Any idea yet how the magic system works?

I would love to read what you think. Why not record it on the moderated discussion board below the story and share it with everyone? Drop your comment there, and let the discussion begin!

To save myself effort on website creation, I am using Disqus<dot>com to host this discussion board, so you will need to create a Disqus user-name & password. Yes, sorry. I know this is a minor pain but, on the plus side, the Disqus website hosts hundreds of discussion boards for over 5 million users. So it could have something else of interest to you in its channels. Check it out.

Enjoy!